Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #Infomocracy
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I'm rereading The Pushcart War for reasons and am reminded again how it is not only science-fiction (set in the future!) and formally inventive, but also is a manual for collective action, resistance, protest, that is very relevant today. So here's a thread:
For those unfamiliar, The Pushcart War is a children's book by Jean Merrill, copyright 1964, with illustrations by Ronni Solbert, who was Merrill's partner for almost 50 years.
It's framed as a history, but the dates of the events recounted are in the future, and they stay in the future, moving forward in time in every edition. This is why I say it is science fiction, or at least speculative fiction: it imagines a possible uprising against oppression
Also, and I will not stop yelling about this even when I DO like the result: HOLDING A RANDOM POLL WITH NO NOTICE IS NOT A FAIR OR REPRESENTATIVE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS.
Methodology matters. How you phrase the question & possible responses, what times you start and end the poll, how people learn about it, whether everyone has access to it, whether people trust the system (will results be followed? will certain choices lead to repercussions?) -
Change these and you will get a different set of results, even with the same participants. Is an election fair if the ballots aren't blind? Because I think we all assume Twitter can see who votes which way. Is a 12 hour poll fair to a global population?
Once we recognize that an individual in control of a major media platform can be a threat to national security, we have to confront that #InformationIsAPublicGood #Infomocracy
And I do mean confront, because I don't expect it to be easy. What are the principles, rules, oversight that protect public information from turning to propaganda? How can we fund it sufficiently while still having public signaling in the way that markets allow? #Infomocracy
How do we encompass a sufficiently wide range of perspectives? How do we find a balance between innovation and continuity?
I don't expect it to be easy. But I do expect it to be better.
#Infomocracy
I don't expect it to be easy. But I do expect it to be better.
#Infomocracy
The pull quote from this piece on cybersecurity "it really comes down to individuals being prepared and being secure in their practices" reminded me about how the burden of civil defense during the Cold War was shifted to individuals. news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/…
The full context is even more telling: "But the government is not responsible for private-sector networks. And since most of the critical infrastructure in this country is operated within the private sector, it really comes down to individuals being prepared..."
#InformationIsAPublicGood and a national security issue. #Infomocracy
Because of moving and new jobs and so on, I've had to do a lot of paperwork and identification stuff lately, and it keeps bringing me back to Seeing Like a State and how desperately governments try to pin down something as slippery as identity.
One of the examples in SLaS is the institutionalization of last names, and it's fascinating to think about that long moment in which first name and maybe casual identifier (John the Baker, Wang from Qingdao) became insufficient and States felt a family name would do the trick
Now that seems laughable, the idea that first name-last name, maybe with a middle initial, would be unique enough to identify someone. Or couldn't be changed. Or those old passports - not that old even - that include hair & eye color, as if that helped AT ALL.
Population is power, borders are arbitrary, and citizenship is an invented category with invented rules that can change at any time. #Infomocracy #Microdemocracy
Imagine if US followed this up, offering a path to citizenship for all Chinese citizens. Boss move in the power struggle, no? Imagine if China retaliated with the same. Then Russia offers citizenship for anyone but has to sweeten it: no taxes 1st 10years! #SpeculativeResistance
Then countries worried about falling populations like Japan decide to chip in a reimbursement for shipping costs if people come as residents on a path to citizenship. Brain drain becomes more of a concern, so countries try to cushy up their educated #SpeculativeResistance
This is an interesting thread, but I just want to add that I wish we could stop separating out "digital" from other forms of deception. The OP touches on this upthread, but the difference in digital is mostly a matter of scaling and vectors. Important to understand, yes, but+
digital deception and misinformation works in part because people have been primed by slanted coverage and pundit spin on television, by bombast on talk radio. Lies and corruption have been accepted as part of politics.
To stop digital deception we need to condemn other forms as well. If we act like this worse (and not just faster or more widespread) because it happens on that social media thing all the kids are doing, we are badly missing the point. #Infomocracy
Berntzen, Einar, "Democratic consolidation in Central America: a qualitative comparative approach" Third World Quarterly, Vol 14, No 3, 1993. I came for the qualitative comparison but I'm staying for the democracy analysis & regional focus.
"It is widely assumed that elections may promote democracy, but for decades dictatorial regimes in Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala have periodically held elections that merely reinforced or justified authoritarian rule." 589 👀
"The reason for this is that the main obstacle to democratization in Central America has been the existence of authoritarian regimes formed by a sociopolit- ical alliance between the oligarchies and the military." 589
